Translating required-cleanup and draft-comment

[Robert D Anderson <robander@us.ibm.com>]

Hi,

The translation subcommittee was asked when required-cleanup and
draft-comment should be translated. The confusion comes from two
conflicting statements in the spec. First, we state that these elements
should not be translated by default, because they will not appear in the
output. Second, we state that the translate attribute is always inherited,
and should take priority over defaults for an element. The following case
is then unclear:
<p translate="yes">Translatable text
  <required-cleanup>fix this later</required-cleanup>
</p>

The required-cleanup tag inherits translate="yes" even though the content
should not be translated. Essentially, we state that required-cleanup
should have a default of translate="no", but because the default is not
explicit, tools do not work automatically.

To deal with these issues, the translation subcommittee has made the
following recommendations:
1. Add a default of translate="no" to required-cleanup and draft-comment in
the DTDs and Schemas.
2. Clarify the spec to indicate that the translate attribute is respected
on and within these elements. If translate is set to "yes" on
required-cleanup, the contents should be translated. If translate is set to
"yes" on a paragraph within required-cleanup, the contents of that
paragraph should be translated. In other words, the standard definition of
the translate attribute still applies.
3. Update the documentation for the 2 elements to indicate that the
contents will not be translated unless the translate attribute is set to
"yes".

This recommendation recognizes that there are cases where the content of
these elements may be translated. For example, the element may be
specialized into a reusableObject element, where the content must be
translated before it is pulled into other topics. The documentation should
clarify that this can be handled by giving the specialized element a
default of translate="yes" inside the document type.

Sound reasonable? Are there any problems with this change?

Thanks,

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit
(507) 253-8787, T/L 553-8787